Yung Wing is the first-known Chinese student to graduate from an American university. He graduated from Yale College in 1854, where he was a member and librarian of Brothers in Unity, a prominent Yale student literary society. His time at Yale was sponsored by Samuel Robbins Brown (1810–1880).[2] In 1851, at the end of his freshman year, Wing wrote to Albert Booth, a fellow alumnus of Munson Academy and "old Yale, where you have the satisfaction + honor to have gone through." Wing asked for Booth's help in acquiring study materials and stated, "Now you know probably the many disadvantages in which I labor aside from these additional studies."[3] He was a member of the Phi chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. After finishing his studies, Yung Wing returned to Qing Dynasty China and worked with western missionaries as an interpreter. In 1859, he accepted an invitation to the court of the Taiping rebels in Nanjing, but his proposals aimed at increasing the efficiency of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom were all eventually refused. In 1863, Yung Wing was dispatched to the United States by Zeng Guofan to buy machinery necessary for opening an arsenal in China capable of producing heavy weapons comparable with those of the western powers. The arsenal later became Jiangnan Shipyard.

Yung Wing was naturalized as an American citizen on October 30, 1852, and in 1876, he married Mary Kellogg, an American. They had two children: Morrison Brown Yung and Bartlett Golden Yung. At Yale's centennial commencement in 1876, Yung Wing received an honorary Doctor of Laws.[4]

He persuaded the Qing Dynasty government to send young Chinese to the United States to study Western science and engineering. With the government's eventual approval, he organized what came to be known as the Chinese Educational Mission, which included 120 young Chinese students, to study in the New England region of the United States beginning in 1872. The Educational Mission was disbanded in 1881, but many of the students later returned to China and made significant contributions to China's civil services, engineering, and the sciences.

Yung Wing was a lifelong supporter of reform in China. He had followed the lead of the Guangxu Emperor, whom Yung described as the great pioneer of reform in China.[5] The coup d'état of 1898 by the Empress Dowager Cixi aborted the reforms, and many of the reformers were decapitated.[5] A price of $70,000 was placed on Yung's head and he fled Shanghai to Hong Kong.

While in Hong Kong, he applied to the US Consul to return to the US. In a 1902 letter from the US Secretary of StateJohn Sherman, Yung was informed that his US citizenship, which he had held for 50 years, had been revoked and he would not be allowed to return to the United States. Through the help of friends, he was able to sneak into the United States in time to see his youngest son, Bartlett, graduate from Yale.

In 1908, Yung joined "General" Homer Lea, the former American military advisor to Kang Youwei, in a bold and audacious military venture in China called the "Red Dragon Plan" that called for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to conquer the two southern Guang provinces. Through Yung, Lea planned to solicit a united front of various southern Chinese factions and secret societies to organize an army that he would command for the revolution. If successful, Yung was slated to head a coalition government of revolutionary forces while Lea and his fellow conspirators hoped to receive wide-ranging economic concessions from the new government. The Red Dragon conspiracy subsequently collapsed and Yung lived his remaining years in poverty in Hartford, Connecticut, and died in 1912.[6]

After the Wuchang Uprising in the late fall of 1911, Sun Yat Sen wrote to Yung Wing requesting help to build the newly-founded Republic of China, however Yung was unable to go due to old age and illness. He requested his two sons to go in his place.[7] Yung died but a few months later.

P.S. 124, a public elementary school at 40 Division St. in Chinatown in New York City, NY, is named after Yung Wing.
Yung Wing had been considered as a possible namesake for one of Yale University's new colleges to be completed in 2017.[8]